Film Series: The Everyday Absurd: Laughter during Socialism: "The Hare Census"

The Hare Census

(Преброяване на дивите зайци)
1973, Bulgaria
Eduard Zahariev
Bulgarian satiric comedy film. The daily routine in the village of Yugla is shaken by the statistician clerk Asenov who comes with a mission to take the census of the hares in the locality. He makes the village mayor Bay Georgi mobilize the local men in realization of the absurd task. On the very day all the village men are in the field. The mayor, the teacher, the veterinarian... even an old men join the group. Naturally all the efforts failed in fulfilling the mission since not a single hare came into sight.

The film series “Everyday Absurd: Laughter during Socialism” aim to show and deconstruct the everyday life and humour in in socialist societies through their own representation and language. Five movies from five different countries reveal different aspects of the everyday life during socialism. The film series starts with the Bulgarian bureaucratic and statistical absurdities, continues with a guided tour of the corruption, bureaucracy, bribery and black market in Poland, followed by insights into the common life in the Soviet Komunalka and the Czechoslovak educational system for adults, ending with the conspiracy drama comedy from Yugoslavia. Each of these everyday life “cases” has its own significance and context in the very same way as the movies had their own particular destiny in the given socialist societies – some were censured, other became part of the pop culture of the time and got to be perceived as “classics”, third were approved by the communist parties elites etc.

The goal of the films series is to approach humour in its political and social context from an interdisciplinary perspective. Comedy is here not only undestood as a genre but also perceived as a critical and in the same way handy tool of understanding particular societies and cultures, including those from the socialist era. As Kessel argues, “using humor as a category of analysis allows us to see not only how humour entertained but also how it worked as a cultural practice that both organized social order and revealed shared assumptions about society and politics” (Kessel, 2012:3-21).

The movies will be followed by discussions.